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41.
They strode out the gate together, to a huge fancy car. It was glossy green with white trim. The roof was white, and aerodynamically shaped like the rest of the car. It had wrap-down fins and long red taillights. "My pride and joy," Wally said. "It's a 1959 Mercury. Just had it repainted recently. Check out the chrome." He pointed to the gleaming silvery strips along the doors.
They all got in, and Wally started up the powerful 8-cylinder engine. Lindy rode shotgun in the front. Tedda sat behind Wally, while Eduard sat to her right. Wally rolled the windows down. "Automatic," he told them. As the car jumped forward, he reached under the seat. He steered with one hand, while groping with the other, and the car made a quick, powerful turn around the green island outside the gate. As the car rumbled downhill of the cobblestones where Lindy and Tedda had walked every day, Wally said "Ta-daaa!" He produced a plain brown flimsy cardboard package. It was a box, which he handed to Lindy. "Go on, open it."
Lindy's eyes lit up in wonder and delight.
"What is it?" Tedda and Eduard both said in the back seat. They were unable to see what she was staring down at. Lindy smiled for the first time, and held up a pair of white fuzzy dice with black dots. "Fuzzy dice," she said, "like in the movies."
"Go on," Wally said, "hang them on the mirror. Got to do this right."
Lindy dutifully shifted her butt to the middle of the front seat and busied herself. The tip of her tongue protruded as she fastened the dice under the wide rearview mirror. "Does this mean we are going steady?" she said grinning.
"If you want," Wally said. He put his arm around her shoulders, and she pressed close against him.
Tedda and Eduard exchanged questioning, worried glances. He is trying to make it easy for her, Tedda thought. Eduard's look suggested the thought I think she may know.
It was a long drive, taking much of the day. Tedda was surprised at how large West Gotha really was—the city, the countryside, the continent, the world. The air grew clear and sunny. They drove through rolling fields. Farmers waved from amid their hedgerows and village lanes. The road was little more than a two-lane blacktop, but it was marvelously straight. The macadam was black and fresh, and the median line pure white and clean as if it had all been painted recently. The sky was clear blue, except for some fluffy mint-white cumulus clouds. Tedda spied the soaring black figures of many birds, large and small. Some birds were so close that she could see the greenish-red gleam of their feathers, the whites of their eyes, the dark dot of the bird's throat as it opened its beak to chirp hungrily.
Farm tractors stuttered back and forth along brown furrows. Fields of green corn and lettuce and tomatoes stretched far to the right and left. The road headed straight on, passing through towns with smoking chimneys atop matte orange clay roofs. Herds of cows wandered in meadows gleaming with puddles of standing rain water. The healthy smell of fresh manure arose from various domesticated animals. Wally and Lindy enjoyed their closeness, and muttered softly between each other.
They made a few short stops at various gas stations and diners. In one place they had a potty stop and bought gasoline. Eduard took Tedda aside briefly and said, eyeballing the distant Lindy who was walking happily hand in hand with Wally: "Doesn't she get it? Can't we stop her?" Tedda's mind wasn't entirely clear again, as if the very air here was drugging her again. Or maybe it was all this fresh, thick air like cold dairy milk. She could only shrug and walk away from Eduard's concerns. Eduard's voice floated after her: "There will only be three of us coming back, Tedda."
In another place they munched smoky hot dogs on buns, smothered in relish, ketchup, mustard, and onions. Wally and Eduard each polished off a large frosty looking golden beer in a brown glass bottle, while Lindy drank health tea and Tedda opted for crystal clear bottled water.
Late in the day, they were cruising along with the windows open, singing and laughing, while the radio played old rock tunes from long ago, appropriate to the style and era of car.
"Are we getting close yet?" Tedda asked. "How far out is this laboratory of mine?"
Eduard shrugged and withdrew into himself. He looked tired, and seemed to want to doze. Lindy, too, yawned. She said: "Too much fresh air." She glanced back fondly at her roommate, conflict forgotten. Tedda smiled back at her, glad Lindy had found romance with Wally. Tedda impulsively reached forward and patted Lindy's hand, which lay on the seat behind Wally's neck. Tedda was glad later that she had done that, though Lindy pulled the hand away and looked out the window toward the opposite side.
"Something is coming up ahead," Wally said cheerfully. "Must be the lights of East Gotha. I think we're almost to the border. Your laboratories and offices were somewhere near the border on our side, I remember that much. Look for a big sign that says Tedda Industries, or something along those lines."
"Yes!" Tedda said excitedly. "I remember something about that. I have a picture in my mind. I think there were long white buildings and a blue plastic sign with huge letters that said something like von Tedda Industries Gmbh, or something along those lines."
"It is getting a little cold," Wally said. Now he too was yawning. He rolled up the window and turned on the heater. The cabin filled with a dry warmth tinged with a faint, comforting aroma of light machine oil. Wally turned on the radio, and searched for some music, but the stations were growing increasingly staticky. In the end, he turned the radio off.
"Look!" Lindy said. "An aurora borealis."
Tedda leaned forward and frowned. "What is that thing, Wally?"
He shrugged. "Looks like a force field. Could East Gotha be beyond there?"
Eduard sat up, shivering. He was pale, and hugging himself. "It's not an aurora and it's not the border. It's the end of the world."
Tedda and Wally looked at Eduard. Lindy turned and looked over the back of her seat at Eduard, then resumed her forward looking position.
"What's going on?" Wally said, slowing. He had beads of sweat popping out on his forehead, and drew shuddering breaths.
"Maybe we can still turn around now," Tedda said in alarm, clutching the door handle with her left hand and the back of Wally's seat with the other. Her hands were trembling.
"Wally?" Lindy asked, looking at him with alarmed curiosity.
"This isn't the top world," Eduard said. "I should have figured that out already. That is the end of this femtobase. We're cooked."
"Wally!" Tedda cried, beating on his shoulder. "Stop the car! Turn around."
Like a drunk's, Wally's head slumped forward and his foot grew heavier on the gas pedal. The car speeded up. Tedda heard the powerful engine purr, and the wheels hum on the smooth road surface.
"That looks like the ocean out there," Lindy said. She sat stiffly back, a pale image of fear. In the back, Eduard sobbed quietly. Tedda remained simply confused and frightened.
The wall of greenish-orange light, rippling and moving silently, approached quickly. Behind them, Tedda caught one last frightened glance of the normal world: a truck parked in a bean field; a rusting pump on a crumbling concrete apron in an abandoned gas station; a crow, fluttering to a landing on a tree branch as night fell.
The car sailed into the rippling barrier, and the light in the car turned dim orange, then dimmer dark green like under the sea. Only it wasn't the sea. It was the dying light at the edge of the world.
Lindy turned into a mosaic and crumbled away into nothing. Tedda started to scream, but then Wally winked out of existence. Tedda found herself looking at the massive steering wheel with its creamy white plastic hand guard all around. Hearing a sobbing noise on her right, she glanced over just in time to see Eduard vanish like a cloud of dust motes in bottle-green evening light.
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